The Story of the Barbary Corsairs Part 3

FOOTNOTES:

[13] See S. Lane-Poole, _The Story of Turkey_, 135.

[14] See _The Story of Turkey_, 136.

[15] _History of the Maritime Wars of the Turks_, 20.

[16] Hajji Khalifa, 21.

[17] Jurien de la Graviere, _Doria et Barberousse_, Pt. I., ch. xv.

[18] See the _Story of Turkey_, 158-163.

[19] See S. Lane-Poole, _The Art of the Saracens_, 239, &c.

[20] _Doria et Barberousse_, Pt. II., ch. vii.

[21] _Ibid._, Pt. II., ch. vii., p. 106 ff.

[22] See the _Story of Turkey_, 170; and the ill.u.s.trations, pp. 137, 147, 171, 175, 177.

VII.

DORIA AND BARBAROSSA.

1533.

Kheyr-ed-din was in no hurry to visit the Sublime Porte. He had to provide for the safety and government of Algiers during his absence, when exposed to the dangers both of foreign attack and internal intrigue. He had to reckon with the galleys of the Knights of St.

John, who, after wandering homeless for a longer time than was at all creditable to that Christendom which they had so heroically defended at Rhodes, had finally settled in no less convenient a spot than Malta, whence they had every opportunity of hara.s.sing the operations of the Corsairs (1530). Moreover Andrea Doria was cruising about, and he was not the sort of opponent Barbarossa cared to meet by hazard.

The great Genoese admiral considered it a personal duel with Kheyr-ed-din. Each held the supreme position on his own side of the water. Both were old men and had grown old in arms. Born in 1468, of a n.o.ble Genoese family, Doria was sixty-five years of age, of which nearly fifty had been spent in warfare. He had been in the Pope's guard, and had seen service under the Duke of Urbino and Alfonso of Naples, and when he was over forty he had taken to the sea and found himself suddenly High Admiral of Genoa (1513). His appointment to the command of his country's galleys was due to his zealous services on sh.o.r.e, and not to any special experience of naval affairs; indeed the commander of the galleys was as much a military as a naval officer.

Doria, however, late as he adopted his profession, possessed undoubted gifts as a seaman, and his leaders.h.i.+p decided which of the rival Christian Powers should rule the Mediterranean waves. He devoted his sword to France in 1522, when a revolution overthrew his party in his own republic; and so long as he was on the French side the command of the sea, so far as it did not belong to the Barbary Corsairs, belonged to France. When in 1528 he judged himself and his country ill-used by Francis I., he carried over his own twelve galleys to the side of Charles V.; and then the Imperial navies once more triumphed. Doria was the arbiter of fortune between the contending states. Doria was the liberator of Genoa, and, refusing to be her king, remained her idol and her despot. No name struck such terror into the hearts of the Turks; many a s.h.i.+p had fallen a prey to his devouring galleys, and many a Moslem slave pulled at his oars or languished in Genoese prisons. Officially an admiral, he was at the same time personally a Corsair, and used his private galleys to increase his wealth.

Kheyr-ed-din's fame among Christians and Turks alike was at least as great and glorious as his rival's. He had driven the Spaniards out of Algiers and had inflicted incalculable injuries upon the s.h.i.+ps and sh.o.r.es of the Empire. Though the two had roved the same sea for twenty years, they had never met in naval combat: perhaps each had respected the other too much to risk an encounter. Long ago, when Kheyr-ed-din was unknown to fame, Doria had driven him from the Goletta (1513); and in 1531 the Genoese admiral made a descent upon Shershel, which Kheyr-ed-din had been strengthening, to the great detriment and anxiety of the opposite coast of Spain. The Imperialists landed in force, surprised the fort, and liberated seven hundred Christian slaves. Then, contrary to orders and heedless of the signal gun which summoned them on board, the soldiery dispersed about the town in search of pillage, and, being taken at a disadvantage by the Turks and Moriscos of the place, were driven in confusion down to the beach, only to perceive Doria's galleys rapidly pulling away. Nine hundred were slaughtered on the seash.o.r.e and six hundred made prisoners. Some say that the admiral intended to punish his men for their disobedience; others that he sighted Kheyr-ed-din's fleet coming to the rescue. At all events he drew off, and the two great rivals did not meet. The Genoese picked up some Barbary vessels on his way home to console him for his failure.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ANDREA DORIA.]

In the following year he retrieved his fame by a brilliant expedition to the coasts of Greece. With thirty-five sail and forty-eight galleys he attacked Coron, by way of making a diversion while Sultan Suleyman was invading Hungary,[23] and after a heavy bombardment succeeded in landing his men on the curtain of the fort. The Turkish garrison was spared and marched out, and Mendoza was left in command, while Doria bore up to Patras and took it, occupied the castles which guard the Gulf of Corinth, and returned in triumph to Genoa before the Turkish fleet could come up with him. This was in September, 1532. In the following spring a yet more daring feat was accomplished. Coron was running short of supplies, and a Turkish fleet blockaded the port.

Nevertheless Cristofero Pallavicini carried his s.h.i.+p in, under cover of the castle guns, and encouraged the garrison to hold out; and Doria, following in splendid style, fought his way in, notwithstanding that half his fleet, being sailing galleons, became becalmed in the midst of the Turkish galleys, and had to be rescued in the teeth of the enemy. Lutfi Pasha was outmanoeuvred and defeated. This revictualling of Coron, says Admiral Jurien de la Graviere, was one of the skilfullest naval operations of the sixteenth century.[24]

It was clear that, while Doria had effected almost nothing against the Barbary Corsairs, he always mastered the Turks. The Sultan was eager to discover Kheyr-ed-din's secret of success, and counted the days till he should arrive in the Golden Horn. The Corsair, for his part, had heard enough of Doria's recent exploits to use more than his habitual caution, and he was not disposed to cheapen his value in the Sultan's eyes by a too precipitate compliance with his Majesty's command. At last, in August, 1533, having appointed Hasan Aga, a Sardinian eunuch, in whom he greatly confided, to be viceroy during his absence, Kheyr-ed-din set sail from Algiers with a few galleys; and after doing a little business on his own account--looting Elba and picking up some Genoese corn-s.h.i.+ps--pursued his way, pa.s.sing Malta at a respectful distance, and coasting the Morea, till he dropped anchor in the Bay of Salonica.[25] By his route, which touched Santa Maura and Navarino, he appears to have been looking for Doria, in spite of the smallness of his own force (which had, however, been increased by prizes); but, fortunately, perhaps, for the Corsair, the Genoese admiral had returned to Sicily, and the two had missed each other on the way.

Soon the eyes of the Sultan were rejoiced with the sight of a Barbary fleet, gaily dressed with flags and pennons, rounding Seraglio Point, and, in perfect order, entering the deep water of the Golden Horn; and presently Kheyr-ed-din and his eighteen captains were bowing before the Grand Signior, and reaping the rewards due to their fame and services. It was a strange sight that day at Eski Serai,[26] and the divan was crowded. The tried generals and statesmen of the greatest of Ottoman emperors a.s.sembled to gaze upon the rough sea-dogs whose exploits were on the lips of all Europe; and most of all they scrutinized the vigorous well-knit yet burly figure of the old man with the bushy eyebrows and thick beard, once a bright auburn, but now h.o.a.ry with years and exposure to the freaks of fortune and rough weather. In his full and searching eye, that could blaze with ready and unappeasable fury, they traced the resolute mind which was to show them the way to triumphs at sea, comparable even to those which their victorious Sultan had won before strong walls and on the battle plain.

The Grand Vezir Ibrahim recognized in Kheyr-ed-din the man he needed, and the Algerine Corsair was preferred before all the admirals of Turkey, and appointed to reconstruct the Ottoman navy. He spent the winter in the dockyards, where his quick eye instantly detected the faults of the builders. The Turks of Constantinople, he found, knew neither how to build nor how to work their galleys.[27] Theirs were not so swift as the Christians'; and instead of turning sailors themselves, and navigating them properly, they used to kidnap shepherds from Arcadia and Anatolia, who had never handled a sail or a tiller in their lives, and entrust the navigation of their galleys to these inexperienced hands.[28] Kheyr-ed-din soon changed all this.

Fortunately there were workmen and timber in abundance, and, inspiring his men with his own marvellous energy, he laid out sixty-one galleys during the winter, and was able to take the sea with a fleet of eighty-four vessels in the spring. The period of Turkish supremacy on the sea dates from Kheyr-ed-din's winter in the dockyards.

FOOTNOTES:

[23] See the _Story of Turkey_, 191.

[24] _Doria et Barberousse_, Pt. II. ch. xxv.

[25] The Spanish historians are silent on the subject of this expedition: or, rather, Haedo positively denies it, and says that Kheyr-ed-din sent an emba.s.sy to the Sultan, but did not go in person.

Hajji Khalifa, however, is clear and detailed in his account of the visit.

[26] For an account of Stambol and the old Seraglio see the _Story of Turkey_, 260 ff.

[27] See Chapter XVI., below.

[28] So says Jean Chesneau, French secretary at Constantinople in 1543.

See Jurien de la Graviere, _Les Corsaires Barbaresques_, 13.

VIII.

TUNIS TAKEN AND LOST.

1534-1535.

The dwellers on the coasts of Italy soon discovered the new spirit in the Turkish fleet; they had now to dread Corsairs on both hands, east as well as west. In the summer of 1534 Kheyr-ed-din led his new fleet of eighty-four galleys forth from the Golden Horn, to flesh their appet.i.te on a grand quest of prey. Entering the Straits of Messina, he surprised Reggio, and carried off s.h.i.+ps and slaves; stormed and burnt the castle of S. Lucida next day, and took eight hundred prisoners; seized eighteen galleys at Cetraro; put Sperlonga to the sword and brand, and loaded his s.h.i.+ps with wives and maidens. A stealthy inland march brought the Corsairs to Fondi, where lay Giulia Gonzaga, the young and beautiful widow of Vespasio Colonna, d.u.c.h.ess of Trajetto and Countess of Fondi. She was sister to the "heavenly Joanna of Aragon," on whose loveliness two hundred and eighty Italian poets and rimesters in vain exhausted the resources of several languages;--a loveliness shared by the sister whose device was the "Flower of Love"

amaranth blazoned on her s.h.i.+eld. This beauty Kheyr-ed-din destined for the Sultan's harem, and so secret were the Corsairs' movements that he almost surprised the fair Giulia in her bed. She had barely time to mount a horse in her s.h.i.+ft and fly with a single attendant,--whom she afterwards condemned to death, perhaps because the beauty revealed that night had made him overbold.[29] Enraged at her escape the pirates made short work of Fondi; the church was wrecked, and the plundering went on for four terrible hours, never to be forgotten by the inhabitants.

Refreshed and excited by their successful raid, the Turks needed little encouragement to enter with heartiness upon the real object of the expedition, which was nothing less than the annexation of the kingdom of Tunis. Three centuries had pa.s.sed since the Sultans of the race of Hafs had established their authority on the old Carthaginian site, upon the breaking up of the African empire of the Almohades.

Their rule had been mild and just; they had maintained on the whole friendly relations with the European powers, and many treaties record the fair terms upon which the merchants of Pisa, Venice, and Genoa were admitted to the port of Tunis. Saint Louis had been so struck with the piety and justice of the king that he had even come to convert him, and had died in the attempt. Twenty-one rulers of their line had succeeded one another, till the vigour of the Beni Hafs was sapped, and fraternal jealousies added bloodshed to weakness.

Hasan, the twenty-second, stepped to the throne over the bodies of forty-four slaughtered brothers, and when he had thus secured his place he set a pattern of vicious feebleness for all sovereigns to avoid. A rival claimant served as the Corsair's pretext for invasion, and Kheyr-ed-din had hardly landed when this miserable wretch fled the city, and though supported by some of the Arab tribes he could make no head against the Turkish guns. Tunis, like Algiers, had been added to the Ottoman Empire, against its will, and by the same masterful hands. It may be doubted whether the Sultan's writ would have run in either of his new provinces had their conqueror gainsaid it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TUNIS, 1566.

(_From a Map in the British Museum._)]

Tunis did not long remain in the possession of Barbarossa. The banished king appealed to Charles V., and, whatever the emperor may have thought of Hasan's wrongs, he plainly perceived that Barbarossa's presence in Tunis harbour was a standing menace to his own kingdom of Sicily. It was bad enough to see nests of pirates perched upon the rocks of the Algerine coast; but Tunis was the key of the pa.s.sage from the west to the eastern basin of the Mediterranean, and to leave it in the Corsairs' hands was to the last degree hazardous. Accordingly he espoused the cause of Hasan, and at the end of May, 1535, he set sail from Barcelona with six hundred s.h.i.+ps commanded by Doria (who had his own grudge to settle), and carrying the flower of the Imperial troops, Spaniards, Italians, and Germans. In June he laid siege to the Goletta--or _halk-el-wed_, "throat of the torrent," as the Arabs called it--those twin towers a mile asunder which guarded the channel of Tunis. The great carack _St. Ann_, sent, with four galleys, by "the Religion" (so the Knights of Malta styled their Order), was moored close in, and her heavy cannon soon made a breach, through which the Chevalier Cossier led the Knights of St. John, who always claimed the post of danger, into the fortress, and planted the banner of "the Religion" on the battlements[30] (14 July). Three desperate sallies had the besieged made under the leaders.h.i.+p of Sinan the Jew; three Italian generals of rank had fallen in the melley; before they were driven in confusion back upon the city of Tunis, leaving the Goletta with all its stores of weapons and ammunition, and its forty guns, some of them famous for their practice at the siege of Rhodes, and more than a hundred vessels, in the hands of the enemy. Barbarossa came out to meet the emperor at the head of nearly ten thousand troops; but his Berbers refused to fight, the thousands of Christian slaves in the Kasaba (or citadel), aided by treachery, broke their chains and shut the gates behind him; and, after defending his rampart as long as he could, the Corsair chief, with Sinan and Aydin "Drub-Devil," made his way to Bona, where he had fortunately left fifteen of his s.h.i.+ps. The lines of Kheyr-ed-din's triple wall may still be traced across the neck of land which separates the lake of Tunis from the Mediterranean. Fifteen years ago this rampart was cut through, when nearly two hundred skeletons, some Spanish money, cannon b.a.l.l.s, and broken weapons were found outside it.[31]

For three days Charles gave up the city of Tunis to the brutality of his soldiers. They were days of horrible license and bloodshed. Men, women, and children were ma.s.sacred, and worse than ma.s.sacred, in thousands. The infuriated troops fought one with the other for the possession of the spoil, and the luckless Christians of the Kasaba were cut down by their deliverers in the struggle for Kheyr-ed-din's treasures. The streets became shambles, the houses dens of murder and shame: the very Catholic chroniclers admit the abominable outrages committed by the licentious and furious soldiery of the great Emperor.

It is hard to remember that almost at the very time when German and Spanish and Italian men-at-arms were outraging and slaughtering helpless, innocent people in Tunis, who had taken little or no hand in Kheyr-ed-din's wars and had accepted his authority with reluctance, the Grand Vezir Ibrahim was entering Baghdad and Tebriz as a conqueror at the head of wild Asiatic troops, and not a house nor a human being was molested. _Fas est et ab hoste doceri._

So far as Tunis was concerned the expedition of Charles V. was fruitless. Before he sailed in August he made a treaty with Hasan, which stipulated for tribute to Spain, the possession of the Goletta by the crown of Castile, the freeing of Christian slaves, the cessation of piracy, and the payment of homage by an annual tribute of six Moorish barbs and twelve falcons; and he and the Moor duly swore it on Cross and sword. But the treaty was so much parchment wasted. No Moslem prince who had procured his restoration by such means as Hasan had used, who had spilt Moslem blood with Christian weapons and ruined Moslem homes by the sacrilegious atrocities of "infidel" soldiers, and had bound himself the va.s.sal of "idolatrous"

Spain, could hope to keep his throne long. He was an object of horror and repulsion to the people upon whom he had brought this awful calamity, and so fierce was their scorn of the traitor to Islam that the story is told of a Moorish girl in the clutch of the soldiers, who, when the restored King of Tunis sought to save her, spat in his face; anything was better than the dishonour of his protection. Hasan pretended to reign for five years, but the country was in arms, holy Kayrawan would have nothing to say to a governor who owed his throne to infidel ravishers; Imperial troops in vain sought to keep him there; Doria himself succeeded only for a brief while in reducing the coast towns to the wretched prince's authority; and in 1540 Hasan was imprisoned and blinded by his son Hamid, and none can pity him.

The coast was in the possession of the Corsairs, and, as we shall see, even the Spaniards were forced ere long to abandon the Goletta.

Nevertheless, the expedition to Tunis was a feat of which Europe was proud. Charles V. seldom suffered from depreciation of his exploits, and, as Morgan quaintly says, "I have never met with that Spaniard in my whole life, who, I am persuaded, would not have bestowed on me at least forty _Boto a Christo's_, had I pretended to a.s.sert Charles V.

not to have held this whole universal globe in a string for four-and-twenty hours; and _then it broke_: though none had ever the good nature or manners to inform or correct my ignorance in genuine history, by letting me into the secret when that critical and slippery period of time was."[32] Naturally admirers so thoroughgoing made the most of the conquest of Tunis, the reduction of the formidable Goletta, the release of thousands of Christian captives, and, above all, the discomfiture of that scourge of Christendom, Barbarossa himself. Poets sang of it, a painter-in-ordinary depicted the siege, a potter at Urbino burnt the scene into his vase; all Europe was agog with enthusiasm at the feat. Charles posed as a crusader and a knight-errant, and commemorated his gallant deeds and those of his gentlemen by creating a new order of chivalry, the Cross of Tunis, with the motto "Barbaria," of which however we hear no more.

Altogether "it was a famous victory."